Feeding blues, garage, drone and avant-garde rock through fuzzed, wailing amps and guitars, Loop redefined spatial noise along with bands like Spacemen 3, The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. But it still unfairly remains the unheard standout of that storied crowd.
But not for long. Like Swerdriver and My Bloody Valentine, Loop's architect Robert Hampson is seizing the 2008 zeitgeist and reissuing his band's 1987 debut Heaven's End and the 1989 follow-up Fade Out in November. Those two auspicious releases will be followed by the 1988 compilation The World in Your Eyes, reintroducing the band that went on to influence everyone from Mogwai to A Place to Bury Strangers.
The lamentably out-of-print albums sharpen the focus on what was an amazing, experimental time for rock. Loop latched onto thrashed blues grooves and rode them hard, oscillating between distorted, hypnotic and ambient soundscapes while throwing in samples from 2001: A Space Odyssey for good measure.
this audio or video is no longer available**Heaven's End was a spacetracking head trip that crawled beneath 1987's sonic underbelly, offering something strange and beautiful. Meanwhile, its more brutal companion Fade Out belied its quiet title with Melvins-like threat and riffage. Good times, people, good times.
A guy who usually likes his privacy, Hampson is also busy on the solo front. Later this year, he releases Vector, closing out 2008's so-called shoegaze comeback on a sober note. From the return of My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver to releases from Mogwai and more, it's been a hell of a year. (Hurry up, Autolux!)
It will be nice to have Loop back in pop culture, if only for a little time. Nostalgia may kill, but it still kicks ass once in a while.
this audio or video is no longer available**Photo: Heaven'sEnd.org
See also:
- What Is(n't) Shoegaze?
- My Bloody Valentine Tried to Kill Me!
- Video: My Bloody Valentine's "You Made Me Realise"
- Masters at Work: An Interview With All Tomorrow's Parties Founder Barry Hogan
- Rock's Toughest Trio Autolux Gets Lost in Transit
- Magnetic Morning and Swervedriver's Franklin Steps Outside the Industry
- Reunited, And It Feels So Loud: An Interview With Swervedriver
- Swervedriver, Film School Hypnotize Hollyweird
- Mogwai's Brathwaite Howls About Hawk, CDs, Bush
- MP3: 'The Best Mogwai Song in Ten Years'
- The Melvins' Boots is a Kick in the Eardrum
- A Place to Bury Stangers Rewires Noise Rock
